


Count on Me to Put a Bullet In Your Skull

by magebird



Category: Inception (2010)
Genre: Aftermath of Torture, Hurt/Comfort, Implied or Off-stage Rape/Non-con, M/M, Rape Aftermath, Temporary Character Death, Torture, Trauma
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-01-01
Updated: 2013-01-01
Packaged: 2017-11-23 04:21:18
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,776
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/618017
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/magebird/pseuds/magebird
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Dom had always known the kid had nerves of steel.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Count on Me to Put a Bullet In Your Skull

**Author's Note:**

> **Prompt:** [So, I need to see something where the reason Cobb and Arthur are so close is because once a job went wrong and Cobb and Arthur got caught by bad peoples, and Arthur got tortured the heck out of (and possibly non-conned) to get to Cobb. Could be, like, that time in history and be Cobb/Arthur H/C, or could be later on and, say, Eames finds out and then they have Eames/Arthur H/C.](http://community.livejournal.com/inception_kink/756.html?thread=2258420#t2258420)

Dom had always known the kid had nerves of steel. He hadn’t balked at the thought of sharing dreams, never offered the instinctual resistance to the idea of letting someone else invade him in that way, view his most intimate secrets as if they were paintings on a wall.

Later, it had turned out that any secrets Arthur kept were too carefully guarded for such casual scrutiny, but Dom had to admit he had balls. After all, it wasn’t easy to stare down the barrel of a gun and simply believe that a bullet between the eyes wouldn’t kill him forever. It wasn’t easy to stand, unwavering except for the slightest tremor when there were a thousand projections trying to break down the door you were trying to keep shut. It wasn’t so easy to not ask stupid questions when there was a job that needed doing and stride fearless towards the edge of a cliff.

So when Dom heard him screaming, really screaming, for the first time, it rattled him. Of course, bullets never went in easy, and he’d heard Arthur cry out a hundred times, more, already, but those were short cries, ones that he quickly bit off and suppressed. Arthur took a certain pride in his stoicism, Dom thought. But now he could hear him screaming, crying out in what sounded like agony, unable to stop himself.

Dom closed his eyes, tight, tried to turn his face from the sound of it, of the heavy thud of a fist on flesh, or maybe a knife sinking in to the hilt—But his hands were tied above his head and he couldn’t block out the sound, could only imagine what was happening in the other room of their target’s replicated penthouse.

The cry suddenly stopped, and Dom tried to crane around, see if they’d killed him, if he’d escaped—But there was a wet cough, and he saw through the open door as Arthur dropped to his knees, collapsing onto all fours after an instant and struggling for breath. There appeared to be blood dripping from his mouth and nose, and when he curled in on himself, Dom saw a bloodied handprint where his palm had been pressed to the pristine white carpet.

Their captors were lean, powerfully-built projections operating under the strict control of their target. She was a woman of great power, the mistress of some high-ranking Russian official, who had turned the tables on them almost the moment they entered her dream to try and secure blackmail information about her lover. She was called Galina Pervaia, and though he could see nothing of her from where he was tied in the bedroom of the penthouse, Dom knew she was watching her security guards torture Arthur with sadistic glee. She not only wanted to stop them invading her dreams, she’d told them in grade-school level English, she wanted them to be afraid.

One of the projections reached down to drag Arthur back up to his feel by his collar, and Dom heard him choke a little as he struggled to regain his feet. Arthur’s tie was askew, and his jacket had been lost in the fight they’d lost in coming here. There were little spots of red all across his white dress shirt, and a huge red stain spreading down from his left shoulder, the arm hanging limp. There was a gash in the shirt—A knife wound, then, in a place that would hurt like hell and leave him unable to move that arm, but not risk killing him. As Arthur raised his face to meet his attacker’s eyes, Dom saw that there were already awful purple bruises spreading across his cheek. It made his stomach turn. The projections obviously knew how to hit to cause the most pain and the least actual damage.

Someone said something in Russian, and all at once the whole group started to move towards the bedroom. Two men had to join the one holding Arthur to get him to move, and Dom was relieved to see that Arthur grit his teeth and resisted as much as he could while they dragged him along. They met eyes for a moment, and Dom saw Arthur’s gaze flick towards his tied wrists. A frown crossed Arthur’s face, and Dom felt his stomach drop. If Arthur saw any way of him getting free, he would have tried to signal him—

Another order, barked in Russian, and two of the men holding Arthur shoved him to the floor. Dom saw him tense, and try to shove himself back up, but he either didn't have the strength, or the pain was to great, and he could only manage to get up into a graceless kneeling position, lifting his head to stare warily at the men around him and try to defend from any impending blows. Closer, now, and Dom could see that his lip was split and there were purpling marks on his neck where someone had grabbed him by the throat.

Pervaia swept into the room, wearing a pale blue cocktail dress that was spattered with a little of Arthur’s blood. She was barefoot, her heels hanging from one crooked finger, and her beautiful face was stretched into a thin smile.

“You hurt, when your friend is hurting, no?” she said, speaking to Dom in carefully enunciated English, “You do. And you will be sorry to have come here, into me.”

Dom’s jaw tightened, and his eyes flicked again to Arthur, who was taking the momentary pause to try and catch his breath. From the way he was wincing on every wheezing inhalation, he probably had a cracked rib or two. He needed more time before he’d be able to stand anything else.

If Arthur could be made of steel, Dom knew he had to have the strength to be the same.

“Go to hell, bitch,” Dom snarled, balling his hands into fists. Pervaia turned to one of the men standing beside her, a tall dark-haired man, and he leaned down to murmur in Russian in her ear. Her eyes flashed—obviously the projection had been translating—and then she laughed, responded in words that sounded ominous even though Dom didn’t understand a thing she said.

Arthur’s eyes, however, widened, and he looked up at Dom with an expression he’d never seen on that face before—one of terror. He tried to scramble back, but the three men who’d been manhandling him grabbed him again, lifting him bodily and shoving him against the nearest wall.

“Cobb—“ Arthur yelped thickly, struggling like a madman, kicking out but unable to get any purchase against three of them at once, “Dom, please, _Dom_ —! Do something!”

Dom tensed, trying to find some way to fight back, and then grabbed the ropes he was suspended from and dragged himself up, swinging forward to kick out at the nearest thug—One of the men holding Arthur. He managed to smack him solidly in the wrist with one foot, and the man snarled, jerked back a few steps and giving Arthur half a chance. Before he could swing back for another kick, two more of them had grabbed him, but Dom saw Arthur break free for a second and fling himself at the nearest guard, trying to grab the man’s gun—

There were too many people shouting, and Dom was yanked down in the confusion, forced to his knees bodily. Ordinarily he would have expected a gun against his temple, but these men knew better than to offer him an escape through death. A hand fisted in his hair, yanking his head back and making his vision go white for a second, and he heard rather than saw the thud and yelp that meant someone had thrown Arthur to the ground as well.

It was all over almost before it had begun, and Dom found himself with his face being ground into the carpet and his arms pinned painfully behind his back. He could see Arthur was in a similar predicament, though his teeth were gritted in pain and his nose was bleeding even more freely that before.

“I am lucky carpet is not real.” Pervaia said, then added something in Russian and Dom found himself dragged up by his hair. An arm wrapped around his neck, forcing him to march towards the door. He saw Arthur open his eyes and tried to meet the other man’s gaze, to say something, but his captor jerked him away and towards the door.

\---

What seemed like an eternity of watching a top spin later, Dom heard the door to his makeshift prison—a windowless laundry room devoid of anything he could use to kill himself save trying to drown himself in the washer—open, and one of the men threw Arthur down on the floor next to him.

Most of the blood on his skin had been rubbed away, but his clothes were still stained with blood—more than before, Dom saw, and his shirt was untucked, his belt and tie missing completely. Some horrible thought started to grow in the back of Dom’s head, and he shuffled forward to lay a hand on Arthur’s motionless shoulder.

The other man flinched visibly, curling in as if to try and protect himself, and Dom felt his stomach drop. If Pervaia had been trying to get to him through Arthur's pain, she’d succeeded, and they still had several long hours in the dream state to go before their time ran out and they awoke naturally.

“Hey, Arthur,” Dom said in a low voice, and though Arthur remained stiff, he lifted his head a little and opened his eyes. They were red, bloodshot, as if from weeping, and Dom fought the urge to fling himself at the door, to try and break it down and beat to a pulp every one of the vicious bastards who’d done this to him. Instead, he swallowed and said, “It’s me. How badly are you hurt?”

Arthur opened his mouth, tried to speak, but all the screaming Dom had heard in the last hour or so must have gotten to him because nothing came out but a harsh, unformed whisper of air. He swallowed, tried again, but his voice was gone completely. Clearly frustrated, he struggled to sit up, but made a small whimpering noise and curled up again, clutching at his stomach.

“Hell…” Dom breathed, leaning back and closing his eyes. This was Arthur’s dream, his death would end it, but there was no real easy or quick way to kill him. Still… It would end whatever pain he was going through. Dom ran a hand down his face, taking a deep breath, and then said, “I can kill you as quickly as possible—Break your neck or strangle you or something, I don’t know, and then we’ll both be out of here.”

Though his eyes were closed again, Dom could tell Arthur was listening by the way he turned his head a little towards him, and the frown line between his eyes lessened slightly. Though not a sound came out, Dom saw him mouth, “Do it.”

It took some time and effort to get Arthur upright, and by then he was gasping with pain and the wound in his shoulder had started to bleed again freely, despite having been bandaged to keep him from bleeding out during the rest of their torture. They ended up with Arthur sitting almost in Dom’s lap, leaning back against him with Dom supporting them both. 

Dom wrapped his hands around Arthur’s jaw, and turned his head all the way to one side as gently as he could. Arthur didn’t tense, though whether it was due to trust or exhaustion Dom couldn’t tell. He took a deep breath. His own heart was hammering.

“Are you ready?” Dom said, and though Arthur couldn’t answer Dom sensed the slightest of nods. “Okay, three… two…”

He jerked his hands back in the other direction, pushing on the back of Arthur’s skull and pulling with the other hand to increase the speed and power of the strike. The last thing he wanted was to fuck this up and end up paralyzing him and leaving him in more agony until the timer ran out. There was a clean, bright POP, and all the tension left Arthur’s body in a rush. For a moment the world remained steady, and then suddenly the walls began to cave and shudder, and Dom squeezed his eyes shut, waiting for the world to become real again.

\---

Arthur was already standing when Dom came to himself with a start, wrapping up IV lines as hastily as he could. Pervaia’s body was already stirring in the dentist’s chair, and Dom got to his feet quickly to help.

They managed to shut the door behind him an instant before they heard her sit up with a start, and bolted towards the elevator in what could only generously be called a brisk walk. They didn’t make eye contact until the doors slid silently shut, and even then they didn’t speak for the long ride down to the ground floor.

\---

A few days passed. Arthur had been jumpy, unwilling to be touched even in the most innocent of gestures for several hours, and Dom had noticed him rolling his totem whenever he thought the other man’s back was turned. They didn’t tell the others much about the job, other than it had been a failure, and things moved on sluggishly. But Dom’s concern for Arthur didn’t waver. Though all his physical wounds were gone, the emotional impact of what he’d gone through couldn’t be so easily shaken off. Dom knew.

He finally cornered Arthur one evening when they were left with cleaning up the workspace, a modest office space they’d rented in Birmingham. Arthur was untangling IV lines on a table near the lamp, and Dom was supposed to be straightening the desk, but instead was watching Arthur intently.

There was a way he winced, just a little, when Dom had leaned over to point at something on the page he was reading, that had reminded Dom of the way he’d reacted when Dom had first tried to touch him after Pervaia’s men had tortured him. It was an uncontrolled, instinctual motion, completely unlike the usually calculating mannerisms that Dom was familiar with. Arthur was made of steel. Steel didn’t flinch. Something wasn’t right.

“Let me guess,” Arthur said out of the blue, not looking up from the knot that had somehow been worked into the tube he was fussing with, “You're staring at me because you’ve been meaning to talk to me about what happened on that job.”

He glanced up, and Dom nodded silently. He watched as Arthur took a deep breath, and then set the line down on the table. 

“Well, you saw most of what happened. After they dragged you off it was more of the same,” he said, eyes focused determinedly on the tangle of tubes, “And I’m handling it fine.”

“Like hell you are,” Dom said without thinking, and he thought he saw a flicker of emotion cross Arthur’s face, but the other man turned away before he could read it. “I’ve noticed, even if the others don’t know.”

“Oh, where have I heard this one before?” Arthur said, a little too quickly, “It’s a little rich coming from you.”

“That’s not the point,” Dom insisted, “My issues aren’t interfering with my daily life.” Arthur snorted, a disbelieving sound, and Dom scowled, “I’m not _flinching_ every time anyone tries to _touch_ me.”

Arthur was still, but didn’t look back around. In a low, strained voice he insisted, “I don’t want to talk about it, and I’m handling it just fine.”

Dom scoffed, and then came around the desk towards Arthur quickly, one hand outstretched to grab him. Almost instantly Arthur was on his guard, twisting around to knock Dom’s arm aside and reaching for the gun he wasn’t wearing. The move took less than a second, but Dom could see the panic written in the tense lines of Arthur’s shoulders beneath his brown jacket, even if Arthur hurried to try and cover it up.

“What was that?” Arthur demanded, his voice verging on a shout.

Dom crossed his arms. “You didn’t used to scare so easily. Are you going to tell me what the hell happened?” He raised an eyebrow, “You’re the one who’s always telling me to talk about my problems.”

“You don’t exactly listen.”

“That doesn’t mean _you_ don’t. You’re smarter than me, Arthur, always were.” Dom reached out again, more slowly, and though Arthur watched his hand in a way that wasn’t quite under conscious control, he allowed Dom to put it on his shoulder. “Talk to me.”

For a second, Dom expected Arthur to shrug him off, maybe even to storm out and leave Dom with nothing but an angry partner and a tangle of IV lines to try and clean up. Instead, Arthur’s shoulders slumped a little, and he seemed to drop whatever carefully constructed shield he’d had up since the Pervaia job.

“They said they were going to skin me alive and r—hurt me,” he said, dully, “That they were going to rip me apart bit by bit, and never let me die. They… They broke a lot of my bones. Carefully. Deliberately.” He raised his eyes for a second to meet Dom’s, but couldn’t make eye contact, “Pervaia figured out I could understand some of what they were saying pretty early on, and so they were taunting me. I—“ he looked hopeless, “It wouldn’t have bothered me, but they kept beating me and I wasn’t thinking straight. And… And…”

Arthur’s hands clutched convulsively into fists, “They tied me down, to the bed, and sh—shoved something inside me. I don’t know what, but it _hurt_ and they wouldn’t stop _touching_ me.”

The words trailed off, and Dom stared at Arthur with a sick sort of guilt building in his chest. This had been his fault. He’d been the one to take the Pervaia job, the one to bring Arthur into the whole business in the first place, the one they were trying to get to when they done all those things. Under his hand, Arthur was trembling, really shaking, though his face remained strangely impassive, as though he’d had practice keeping emotions like these from showing in his expression. Dom felt fury war with a desire to erase the hurt he knew Arthur was feeling, and since ripping Pervaia’s guts out was not really a viable option, he settled for pulling Arthur forward and wrapping his other arm around him, squeezing him close in a silent embrace.

In his arms, Arthur was still as ice for a long moment, and then seemed to shatter into him, his hands coming up to cling to Dom’s shirt as something like a sob shook him.

“I didn’t know if it was real,” he whispered after a long moment where they just clung to each other in the silent room, “I couldn’t… Remember anything, couldn’t tell anything except that I wanted it to stop.”

Dom couldn’t speak around the lump in his throat, but nodded, smoothing one hand across Arthur’s back, trying to wipe away the lingering tension and pain. Finally he managed, “You’re okay. It was a dream. They can’t hurt you again, they can’t reach you _here._ ”

Arthur continued to cling for longer than Dom expected, his face pressed down into Dom’s shoulder even though Dom could tell he wasn’t crying, only shaking a little with heavily suppressed sobs. He wanted to do more than just hold the other man, wanted somehow to turn back the clock and take away the trauma of the job, to make things right again and make Arthur whole. But of course, he was no magician. He could walk in dreams and create universes with his mind, but he couldn’t stop the people he cared about from getting hurt and his great solution was always to just kill them himself.

Yeah, _that_ really made him someone to rely on. _You can always count on me to put a bullet in your skull, unless I don’t have a gun, in which case you’re out of luck and I’ll leave you to be tortured._

“Kiss me.”

Dom wasn’t sure what he’d heard Arthur say for a moment, and shook himself out of his own thoughts to see Arthur staring at him, his face smoothed of whatever pain Dom had seen there before. There was nothing compromising about him, nothing weak, and Dom swallowed.

“Excuse me?”

“Kiss me,” Arthur told him again in exactly the same tone. Calm, collected, sure. His hands were still clenched around Dom’s shirt, and Dom’s arms were still looped around his shoulders, and he leaned in a little, tilting his head slightly.

Dom didn’t allow himself to acknowledge the million doubts that hit him, but leaned forward, keeping his eyes locked with Arthur. It was strange to kiss someone who didn’t yield, who pressed back with just as much intensity as Dom gave, but it was not unpleasant. They stayed that way for a long second, lips pressed together, held close by the continued embrace, and the Dom parted his lips slightly, allowing Arthur to take the lead and drive forward a little, tongue darting out to run across Dom’s teeth.

Eyes fluttered closed, and Dom let Arthur guide the kiss, allowing him to take whatever comfort he needed from him right then. Finally, Arthur stopped, pulling away a little but keeping his face close enough to Dom’s that Dom could feel the other man’s breath on his cheek.

He didn’t want to open his eyes, didn’t want to wake up from a dream or to find out that it was all reality. He didn’t want the moments to slip past, too fast and too slow, until Arthur swallowed and released his grip on Dom’s shirt, taking the choice away.

Hastily, Dom unwrapped his arms and allowed Arthur to take a half-step back. They studied each other carefully for a moment, and then Arthur picked up the IV line he’d been unknotting and started to tug at one loop, turning his face away. As if coming out of a spell, Dom found himself turning back towards the desk work he’d abandoned, trailing his fingers along the edge of the desk as if to remind himself of what was solid and real.

Behind him, almost too softly to be heard, Arthur said, “Thank you.”

Dom resisted the urge to fish for his totem in his pocket.


End file.
